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Code for America hosted Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu for a discussion of their recent book, "Gardens of the Democracy." In it, they challenge Americans to approach the world not as a machinery that needs to be perfected but as a garden that needs constant attention, discretion, and periodic weeding. The book argues that since society and technology have fundamentally changed, so must our notions of citizenship and democracy: turning "the machine" into a garden. 

LocalData is a new digital toolkit designed to help community groups, professional planners and government agencies modernize community-led data collection of place-based information. THE NEED Across the country, community groups, planners and government agencies collect parcel-level information about communities. Typically, the process for collecting, transcribing and cleaning this data can be confusing, lengthy and disempowering. LocalData transforms this process with technology. LocalData began as a 2012 Code for America project with the City of Detroit. Three Code for America fellows (Matt, Alicia and Prashant) identified a need for local data in Detroit. Though community groups were actively surveying neighborhoods and using this data - neighborhood level surveys took a long time and further stressed the under-resourced technical assistance providers that were assisting this effort. Additionally, comprehensive city-wide surveys were taken infrequently, often involving multiple partners, with months of surveying and transcription.

Civic technology experts have recognized the benefits of sharing technology among governments and institutions. However, instances of successful collaboration and sharing are still few and far between, in part because there is no easy, structured way to share knowledge about this software, let alone the software itself. There is no one place to go to look for civic software that cities need, and no roadmap to share what they have. Enter the Code for America Commons. As infrastructure for the open government movement, the CfA Commons is a community-edited resource to find out what's working, where.

Open government is essential to the future of America. Let's work together to transform our cities. Let's create more efficient government services and a more engaged community. It's time to advocate for a better city. It's time to make an Open Impact.

About Streetmix. Design, remix, and share your street. Add bike paths, widen sidewalks or traffic lanes, learn how all of this can impact your community. A side project by Code for America 2013 fellows:

Code for America enlists the talent of the web industry into public service to use their skills to solve core problems facing our communities. We help passionate technologists leverage the power of the internet to make governments more open and efficient, and become civic leaders able to realize transformational change with technology.

Code for America helps city governments become more transparent, connected and efficient by connecting the talents of cutting-edge web developers with people who deliver city services and want to embrace the transformative power of the web.

Our local governments are struggling to serve us all. Budget cuts and bureaucracy aren't helping. With the combined power of the web, technology, and our voices, the tools for change are in our hands. Open Impact is calling on you to lead the charge for revolutionizing the way our city governments deliver services and interact with residents.

Goals Governments leveraging technology more effectively Citizens and community groups solving civic issues Cities collaborating to work better Civic apps built on linked, open data

We work together to advance technology and data in public decision making. Our community of 2,700+ people work on projects, attend events, help shape public policy, and produce the annual City of Houston Hackathon in May.